The American Lawrence

Although he is frequently perceived as a distinctly English author, in this study D. H. Lawrence is reevaluated as a creator and critic of American literature as well. From 1922–1925, during his “savage pilgrimage” in Mexico and New Mexico, he completed the core of what this book terms his “American oeuvre”—including his major volume of criticism, Studies in Classic American Literature. Lee Jenkins portrays Lawrence as a transatlantic writer whose significant body of work embraces and adapts both English and American traditions and innovations.

The American Lawrence looks at the modernist writer’s experiences in the Americas and his fascination with indigenous culture. It illustrates how Lawrence played an important role in the formation of American literary criticism and the American literary canon. It also shows how Lawrence creatively employs the generic conventions of classic American fiction in his own work. Reassessing Lawrence’s relationship to American modernism and his American literary contemporaries, Jenkins offers new insights into the literary exchange between America and Europe.